Giuliani Blog: Rudy Giuliani Watch: Rudy vs. Hillary by the Electoral Numbers

Cross Posted from the FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani autographs a poster at the World Ag Expo, Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007, in Tulare, Calif. Giuliani toured the expo on his latest stop in a trek through California.

Michael Barone U.S. News: Hillary Vs. Rudy

They’re leading in polls for their parties’ nominations, and so I think we have to regard this as the likeliest pairing in the 2008 presidential race, at least for now. Last July, pollster Jay Leve of SurveyUSA did surveys in 50 states and the District of Columbia of several pairings of candidates. You can see the electoral vote results with a few clicks. They show Giuliani ahead of Clinton 354 to 184. I would guess it would be somewhat closer now, and both candidates carried several states by statistically insignificant margins. Premium subscribers can get access to the percentage results in each state and to the demographic breakdown in each state; there are enough respondents to make the latter statistically significant, with the usual caution that the margin of error is significantly greater for subgroups than for the whole state.

I have examined these numbers before in this blog but decided to give them another look.

Barone has an interesting analysis using old data. But, his conclusions are common sense:

Rudy beats Hillary by putting the East and California in play

Notwithstanding any gaffes by Rudy or a sudden shift of the Democrat Party to nominate Obama, the most likely scenario is that Hillary loses in the electoral college either by a lot or by enough - more than Bush win or Kerry loss in 2004.

Barone noted that Rudy was most weak in the Central Valley in California. Note where Hizzoner was last week campaigning: the Central Valley of California.

California has a winner take all primary by congressional district system. Look for the Mayor to campaign hard in most of them and spend many of his primary campaign dollars in media in the many more rural California counties - gearing up for the general election push for 55 electoral votes.

The electoral college map:

Target states for the Giuliani campaign will be these:

1. California - 55

2. Florida - 27

3. Pennsylvania - 21

4. New York - 31

5. New Jersey - 15

The population of the states vis a vis their electoral college vote ranking is here.

Note that these are BIG media states. A reason why fund raising will be increasingly important to reach the media markets with a saturation of television and radio ads.

Barone’s conclusions:

Upshot: Democrats have some small cause for satisfaction here. Rudy is clearly not as heavily backed as Bush, and voters show more sign of appreciating Hillary’s long southern sojourn than many of us thought. But at best for the Democrats, this puts Arkansas, Louisiana, and West Virginia into play (20 electoral votes) and possibly Virginia (13 electoral votes), while leaving North Carolina and Georgia (30 electoral votes) still out of reach. And Rudy is at least as strong in Florida (27 electoral votes) as Bush was in ‘04.

National upshot: Rudy’s electoral vote position against Hillary is much stronger than Bush’s against Kerry. Rudy puts almost the whole East into play and is significantly stronger in several target states in the Midwest and West. Hillary puts some states into play in the South but with many fewer electoral votes than Rudy does elsewhere. Even if you assume that Hillary is stronger against Rudy today than she was in July, the pairing does place the Republicans in a stronger position than Bush was in ‘04.

So, the GOP has REAL opportunities to retain the White House with Giuliani. Is it time to annoint Rudy the nominee and move on to fund raising for the general election against Hillary Clinton?

Apparently ……